So late as in 1645, a pupil of Gassendi, writing to his master, what he himself witnessed at Aix on the feast of the Innocents, says, “I have seen, in some monasteries in this province, extravagances solemnised, which the pagans would not have practised.  Neither the clergy, nor the guardians, indeed, go to the choir on this day, but all is given up to the lay brethren, the cabbage-cutters, the errand-boys, the cooks and scullions, the gardeners; in a word, all the menials fill their places in the church, and insist that they perform the offices proper for the day.  They dress themselves with all the sacerdotal ornaments, but torn to rags, or wear them inside out; they hold in their hands the books reversed or sideways, which they pretend to read with large spectacles without glasses, and to which they fix the shells of scooped oranges, which renders them so hideous, that one must have seen these madmen to form a notion of their appearance; particularly while dangling the censers, they keep shaking them in derision, and letting the ashes fly about their heads and faces one against the other.  In this equipage they neither sing hymns, nor psalms, nor masses; but mumble a certain gibberish, as shrill and squeaking as a herd of pigs whipped on to market.  The nonsense verses they chant are singularly barbarous:—­

    Haec est clara dies, clararum clara dierum,
    Haec est festa dies, festarum festa dierum.[131]

These are scenes which equal any which the humour of the Italian burlesque poets have invented, and which might have entered with effect into the “Malmantile racquistato” of Lippi; but that they should have been endured amidst the solemn offices of religion, and have been performed in cathedrals, while it excites our astonishment, can only be accounted for by perceiving that they were, in truth, the Saturnalia of the Romans.  Mr. Turner observes, without perhaps having a precise notion that they were copied from the Saturnalia, that “It could be only by rivalling the pagan revelries, that the Christian ceremonies could gain the ascendancy.”  Our historian further observes, that these “licentious festivities were called the December liberties, and seem to have begun at one of the most solemn seasons of the Christian year, and to have lasted through the chief part of January.”  This very term, as well as the time, agrees with that of the ancient Saturnalia:—­

Age, libertate Decembri,
Quando ita majores voluerunt, utere:  narra. 
HOR. lib. ii. sat. 7.

The Roman Saturnalia, thus transplanted into Christian churches, had for its singular principle, that of inferiors, whimsically and in mockery, personifying their superiors, with a licensed licentiousness.  This forms a distinct characteristic from those other popular customs and pastimes which the learned have also traced to the Roman, and even more ancient nations.  Our present inquiry is, to illustrate that proneness in man, of delighting to reverse the order of society, and ridiculing its decencies.